elena volkova's portfolio

Work samples

Alina (The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits)
Maryna (The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits)
Svitlana & Tihon (The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits)
Daria (The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits)

About elena

Elena Volkova is a Ukrainian-born artist and educator whose creative work explores themes of liminality, subjectivity, and domesticity. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has received numerous awards, including the Rubys Grant, the Baltimore Municipal Art Society Travel Prize, and a fellowship at Hamiltonian Artists. Volkova has also been a social practice resident at the Maryland Center for History and Culture and the Anacostia Arts Center, among other… more

View elena's Resume

The Me Before The War No Longer Exists (Ukrainian Portraits)

The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits is a participatory arts project that uses historic photographic processes to create a visual archive bearing witness to the Ukrainians displaced by war. The project aims to engage the community in creation of artifacts, offering space where participants feel visible, valued, and their stories are preserved. I am interested in emergent properties of collaboration and the agile process of shaping images, where the experience of making is centered.

The project explores themes of belonging, liminality, and transition, focusing on the experiences of women who navigate the delicate negotiation between personal lives, communal backgrounds, and their emerging identities as displaced individuals. Ukrainian Portraits address the ambiguity, trauma, and loss that accompany migration, with the resulting images embodying a sense of transition, becoming, and being in-between — woven into the project's narrative of reclaiming one’s sense of self.

Guided by an exploration of collective histories of trauma, the project blurs the lines between subject, creator, and audience, while serving as a catalyst for communal image-making. Through photography, embodiment becomes a tool for healing, reflecting both nuanced perceptions of self and the universality of collective experiences.

The portraits in this collection were made in Germany, in 2023-24, and feature communities of displaced Ukrainians in Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Augsburg, and Berlin.

Alyona
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Maryna
Alina
Nina
Anastasia
Svitlana & Tihon
Masha
Daria
Julia

Anacostia Portraits

Anacostia Portraits is a participatory arts project using a historic photographic process to create a visual archive celebrating the people who make up the Anacostia region of the District of Columbia. In this revival of the 19th century tintype, individuals with a connection to the community were invited to portrait sessions with photographer Elena Volkova, at the Anacostia Arts Center. Their lives touch on different parts of the varied and changing landscape of Anacostia, which began as a Native American settlement, grew into a center for DC’s African-American community, and now grapples with the push and pull of gentrification.

Artist Elena Volkova sees Anacostia Portraits as a way for people to shape their own representations, and to encourage a dialogue between past and present. The tintype, or wet plate collodion, process makes exposures on metal plates coated with wet silver nitrate. Like a Polaroid, each exposure produces a single image. However, a single tintype takes about 15 minutes to create. Volkova uses the forced slowness to collaborate with participants, learning enough about each person to reveal their internal stories in a final portrait.

E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Ahmad_2.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Artise_1.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Christian_6.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Jay_1.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Lake_2.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Sia_2.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Solomon_1.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Tambra_1.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Trimain_1.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.
E.Volkova_Anacostia_Portraits_Vera_1.jpg

This portrait was created in collaboration with the sitter, during the community art public portrait sessions in Anacostia. This original, one-of-a-kind image was made on a metal plate, using the wet plate collodion photographic process, 4x5 in size.

Meanwhile

Meanwhile is a series of photographs that explores the concept of becoming. Created in the immediate everyday environments, the images are observations of moments in constant flux, which poetically document what it means to be living through this time, and to be compelled to get to know one’s place in a deep introspective way. Experienced through the lens of subjectivity, glimpses of domestic environments are juxtaposed with natural forms, leading into an escapist journey.

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Waterlines

"Waterlines" is a collection of black and white and color photographs of water waves, snow, and clouds. Taken from nature, the images suggest tenuity and ephemerality. Clouds, waves, and snowscapes presented on paper with minimum information and vast areas of blank paper suggest interplay between positive and negative space, image and frame, as well as bring the viewerâ??s attention to the reductive nature of the work.

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Airscapes

Airscapes is a collection of large scale photo-based prints of clouds that explores the idea of interchange between nothing and something, and its manifestation in everyday reality.

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PROOFS

In her recent body of work, Volkova explores the idea of liminal space. By juxtaposing life-size photographs against the real environment where these photos were taken, the intent is to question viewerâ??s perception of real and imaginary space, as well as invite the viewer to contemplate the surrounding and become aware of mundane and often overlooked details of the environment.

Fortune Drawings

In Paperscapes, a series of graphite representational drawings of pieces of paper on white paper, I would like to bring the viewerâ??s attention to the discrepancy between art and reality. Employing the ideas of trompe-lâ??oil, I am interested in the threshold between the real and the false, and the moment at which the two become interchangeable. These drawings are of ordinary, commonplace, and familiar objects, bringing the viewerâ??s attention to the neutrality of a piece of paper, as well as its potential.

blankweb
changeweb
insideweb
killingtimeweb

In Between. A site-specific installation

This site-specific exhibition was conceived as a reaction to overlooked details in the gallery space, as well as intended to bring the viewer's attention to the liminal state that exists between the artwork and the real environment. All pieces are graphite on paper.

Untitled (from In Between. Installation)

In this site specific installation the pieces are installed in a row across from each other. The piece on the left is a drawing of the shadow that is cast by the piece on the right. And the piece on the right represents a shadow found in the gallery. When the installation is viewed, I intend to invite the viewer to employ apperception, memory, and comparison, as well as question the boundary of the real and the imaginary.
Untitled. In Between installation shot

In this site specific installation the pieces are installed in a row across from each other. The piece on the left is a drawing of the shadow that is cast by the piece on the right. And the piece on the right represents a shadow found in the gallery. When the installation is viewed, I intend to invite the viewer to employ apperception, memory, and comparison, as well as question the boundary of the real and the imaginary.
Untitled (Key Light)

This graphite-on-paper piece represents the exact shadows that were cast by the pieces that were previously displayed on the gallery wall.
Untitled (from In Between(

In this site specific installation the pieces are installed in a row across from each other. The piece on the left is a drawing of the shadow that is cast by the piece on the right. And the piece on the right represents a shadow found in the gallery. When the installation is viewed, I intend to invite the viewer to employ apperception, memory, and comparison, as well as question the boundary of the real and the imaginary.
Untitled

In this site specific installation the pieces are installed in a row across from each other. The piece on the left is a drawing of the shadow that is cast by the piece on the right. And the piece on the right represents a shadow found in the gallery. When the installation is viewed, I intend to invite the viewer to employ apperception, memory, and comparison, as well as question the boundary of the real and the imaginary.

Proofs II

Proofs is a site-specific photography installation that invites the viewer to examine the space as well as his/her own relationship to the environment. The images are photographs of the space, some printed exact size of the spacial detail, and re-introduced back into the space, creating dichotomy between the real and the imaginary. Emphasizing the sense of emptiness, Volkova photographed the details of the empty gallery environment, paying close attention to light and shadows, as well as subtle details that exist in the space. The untraditional display of the photographs creates a specific relationship between the viewer's body, artwork, and the environment. The goal for this project is to bring attention to the overlooked moment of the everyday.

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Paperscapes

Paperscapes is a series of graphite and silverpoint drawings that brings attention to simple overlooked moments of the everyday. In this body of work, Volkova focuses on the relationship between the real and the imaginary and the way the marginal and the peripheral exists as the main subject of the work. In Folds, Volkova examines the landscape that exists in the paper by reiterating the shadows with pencil marks. These drawings are "light-specific", and have to be carefully lit from a certain angle when on view. In the Edge, a series of 20x30 silverpoints, the viewer is invited to examine the drawing of a shadow in the relationship to the actual shadow casted on the wall.